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Tuesday, 14 May 2013

All your base...

Well, waiting for paint to dry (more on that later), so I thought I would post a bit about my basing decision (duh duh duuuuuh!).

Obviously, Flames of War uses bases like most other wargames. The first time I collected FoW it was just after the game system came out, and none of the vehicle models came based. In the other land based games I've collected (mainly 28mm, but also Epic) I've never gone with basing vehicles, preferring to have them free standing on the table.

Battlefront started shipping a lot of their smaller vehicles molded onto the bases. Other companies, like Forged in Battle have taken that a stage further and started doing even the larger vehicles all in resin.

I made the decision that if my smaller vehicles were on bases, and the infantry were on bases, I may as well base up the larger vehicles. There are a number of reasons to do this, scale being one - the tanks look smaller than they should compared to things like Universal Carriers.

Then there is storage. A base on a tank allows you to magnetise the base to be put on metal sheeting in a box. This keeps the model stable and upright, stops them sliding about, and doesn't wear away the paint like lying in foam might. It also stops smaller topside details like machine guns and radio aerials getting damaged.

The third reason is modelling opportunity. I'm not one normally for having crew standing about on the bases of 'active' vehicles, but the possibility is there. Then there is scenery (again, not a big fan - always think it's daft seeing stuff with urban bases advancing across fields, but that's just me. Same as seeing enemy dead on bases or models, looks great if that's who your fighting, looks daft if your fighting Eldar and trampling dead Orks...

However, I recently had an opportunity to model some 'inactive' vehicles. Stuff that will be on the table but not really doing anything. As I said previously, all my army is mechanised, or includes the relevant transports. So for my 25 pdr battery I had to model two 15 cwt trucks as part of the command teams. This gave me an idea, as these models would be pretty boring on their own - they are also older models that did not already have the base sculpted on.

So there you have it, reasons why you might want to base all your vehicles and a little mini diorama!